[wuliwong]

You are comparing vinyl to film but in the way you are doing it you are implicitly comparing the experience of the consumer of the audio with the producer of the image.

It is interesting though, that the "analog vs. digital" takes place both in photography and music in both the production and consumption stages. You can record analog or digital and listen to analog or digital sources of the recording. Likewise with photography, you can use a digital or film camera and then you can view the image on a print from a darkroom or on your computer monitor.

It seemed as though you were using the term "hipster" to imply vinyl was more about style and trend. If that is the case, I wouldn't characterize the sonic differences between analog and digital recordings as simply "hipster" differences. There is a quantifiable difference between an analog and digital wave. Not saying one is better than the other but they are different.

Your argument that the differences with film vs. digital seemed to boil down to the economics of the two mediums not any aesthetic difference. That is interesting because off the top of my head I don't think there is any scenario in music recording where it becomes cheaper to go analog. I believe, in general, analog recording is more expensive.

[Nav_Panel]

> You are comparing vinyl to film but in the way you are doing it you are implicitly comparing the experience of the consumer of the audio with the producer of the image.

> Your argument that the differences with film vs. digital seemed to boil down to the economics of the two mediums not any aesthetic difference. That is interesting because off the top of my head I don't think there is any scenario in music recording where it becomes cheaper to go analog. I believe, in general, analog recording is more expensive.

You are correct, my apologies. From the producer standpoint, analog recording techniques offer few benefits compared to digital.

I didn't argue from an aesthetic viewpoint because I don't think the aesthetic viewpoint is worth arguing about, in that it's generally a non-productive conversation that ends up in "well I prefer x because it feels better than y". Although, I will argue one particular point: I find that vinyl creates an "equalizing" factor when listening to older music alongside newer music, whereas the increased clarity and lower noise floor of digital makes 50s/60s/earlier recordings sound considerably worse than contemporary recordings. A result of this is that when listening on vinyl, I am better able to look past poor recording quality and make decisions based on artistic quality. This, however, is merely a personal preference.

> It seemed as though you were using the term "hipster" to imply vinyl was more about style and trend. If that is the case, I wouldn't characterize the sonic differences between analog and digital recordings as simply "hipster" differences. There is a quantifiable difference between an analog and digital wave. Not saying one is better than the other but they are different.

I will direct you to this very enlightening page: http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Myths_%28Vinyl%29 -- in my view, the only quantifiable differences in audio between vinyl and digital is that vinyl has a worse noise floor, a generally smaller "usable" frequency spectrum (the highs deteriorate pretty quickly), and includes surface noise, hum, rumble, etc.

I think the revival is hipster. I collect vinyl because it's often the only place to find certain genres of music (such as western swing and classic honky-tonk country), but I am generally hesitant to buy a pressing of a contemporary recording. I will do it, though, because I like having the physical product, but that is a stylistic decision more than one based on necessity/actual audio differences.